What I ended up picking up here was a set of VEVOR 3 Point Hitch Pallet Forks. For all of $239, I thought I could solve this problem. You can see here that I did to a point, but where I struggle and stumble here a little bit is that this little mounting here isn't really pallet forks at all. When you get into some of these really cheap Chinese pallet forks, I would hesitate to call them actually forks. The assembly that comes out here, the front, isn't really actually a cast fork at all, it's actually a piece of box tubing with a little 90-degree point put on the end.
Now, that's a really inexpensive way here to make this piece, this fork, in order to say, "Lift something," but it ends up being really abnormally thick. That caused a problem here when I tried to put my sprayer on it. My sprayer has fork pockets in it. Those fork pockets are sized for the proper pallet forks that I have on the front of my tractor. Works out great, I can slide my forks into that pocket, lift my sprayer up, move it around, drop it in the back of my RTV, it was a great setup. When I took these forks and tried to use them as forks, they didn't work because they're so thick, they didn't fit into the fork pockets. I don't know what else you would call this but it's certainly not a fork.
The next problem I ran into was the left-to-right adjustability of the forks. Normally, when you have forks on a pallet fork frame, you're going to be able to slide them back and forth in order to fit the width of whatever it is that you're trying to pick up. These claimed to be slidable, to be adjustable. They're adjustable pallet forks, but when you look here, the way that these go together here with this tube on this box section and bolt to hold it in place, there's no way to actually push these things in to make them remotely narrow. There's no way to get this fork piece on the inside of the supportive box structure here.
Again, when I took my sprayer, I could easily pick it up with my pallet forks, but I had to jimmy it up with some pieces of wood here in order to center it in the middle of this thing in order to be able to pick it up at all. Not only do my forks not fit, they also couldn't be spaced properly to pick up the sprayer. Why do I tell you this? I've got mixed feelings a little bit on all this stuff pouring out on the internet from overseas companies. There can be great utility in some of these things and affordability. If I didn't have a $200 option here in order to solve this problem, I may not even try, so it's cool that some of this stuff exists.
I struggle though a little bit with the terminology that's used because calling these things pallet forks is completely inappropriate. Other than having two pointy things coming out the back, there's nothing here that you should refer to these things as pallet forks. I don't think you could use them to pick up a pallet in a lot of cases, so a little bit of buyer beware here. I have a link down here in the description that takes you to these things if you want to take a look at them. They might have use on your tractor. This isn't the stuff that dealerships like us typically get involved in and so it's not bad to be aware that some of it's out there.
I hope that it happens to make sense for you. It might have some utility on your tractor. At the same time, I hope too that you're able to look at this stuff and pause for a moment, maybe a little longer than I did, and understand exactly what it is that you're buying. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help, if you have parts or service needs for equipment you've already got, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
